Straw Dogs
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Movie Reviews of Straw Dogs
Movie Review: Straw Dogs
Summary: 5 Stars
A brilliant but apprehensive mathematician and his beautiful wife retreat to an old farmhouse in the English countryside to escape the political strife that they encountered in America. After settling into their new home, their marriage continues to falter as Amy begs for attention while David remains fixed on his work. Meanwhile, the lazy locals that have been hired to complete work on the house have taken a notice to Amy's liberated feminism, and their incendiary behavior finally causes David to snap into a rage of primal violence and retribution.
Sam Peckinpah continues to break the mold of classic cinema in STRAW DOGS, which has been both hailed and criticized for its extreme depictions of rape and violence. These arguments are not entirely unfounded, when the film features an ambiguous rape sequence that has long been the source of controversy. In addition to Peckinpah's depictions of male savagery, STRAW DOGS would seem to lend itself to a misogynistic interpretation of events. A surface level reaction such as this only serves to discredit the carefully crafted characters, growing tension, and psychological breakdown that the film represents.
From the opening scenes, STRAW DOGS maintains a constant sense of unease that continues to build until the thrilling climax. This is can be seen in every single element of the film, from the key editing to the ways the characters interact with each other and through to the specific sights and sounds that Peckinpah chooses to include in order to keep his viewer on the knife's edge. There are countless exchanges and dynamics that must be examined to fully appreciate the complex psychology behind the plot. On one level, Peckinpah deconstructs the marital problems between his lead characters, problems which manifest in subtle and not so subtle ways on screen. Then there is the recurring theme of courage and what it means to be a man, which is constantly reproached both in David and Amy's arguments and in the way that David chooses to defend himself when facing the boorish thugs.
Dustin Hoffman and Susan George are each brilliant in their own unique ways. They are entirely believable as a young married couple, despite their many differences. Hoffman is timid and awkward throughout most of the picture, but there are slight cracks that occur mainly after Amy has pushed his buttons that will foreshadow his hidden aggression. George is given perhaps the most complex role as Amy. With David, she is playful and needing of attention, and often portrays the character as a naive schoolgirl. Things change as she becomes the object of desire for the workmen, where she puts up a callous front as the strong and defiant modern woman. During the notorious rape scene, she struggles with her own faithfulness and sexual desires, having been pushed aside and ignored by David for so long. This scene should not be interpreted as her submittal to the rape, but rather to her own wants. Her horrified reaction when Scutt joins in shows a shift to her true objection and violation. Although she constantly berates David for being a coward, we find in the end that she is the more fearful and hesitant of the two.
STRAW DOGS unleashes a raw and gritty violence that is unrelenting and unforgiving once the events unfold in the end. Peckinpah holds nothing back, and puts all of the graphic scenes on full display. This is, again, a major point of dispute for many film critics, who conclude that Peckinpah looks to exploit the bloody action. If this were the case, the struggle between the Sumners and their aggressors would have occurred much earlier on in the picture. Instead, Peckinpah takes a much more timely approach to the violence, and the final assault on the home becomes a metaphor for David's collapsing psyche. It is extreme, yes, but this is in direct contrast to the bloodless first and second acts.
As far as story and character development are concerned, STRAW DOGS outperforms any other film about rape and revenge. It marks a tremendous shift in movie making as a whole, and is considered by many to be Sam Peckinpah's greatest work.
-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies
Movie Review: difficult film
Summary: 5 Stars
Is this an anti-violent film? Or does Straw Dogs advocate the use of violence in extreame circumstanes?
David Summner is a math academic. He and his English wife, Amy, move to England's countryside in 1971. Amy's home town. His wife implies early in the movie that they have gone there because David did not want to take a side during the campus upevil, a big issue in America in the early 70s. This was only a few years after the Columbia takeover, and Kent State.
Neither David or Amy find the peace they look for in the UK. Both are soon confronted by the ruffian villagers, who are doing repair work at the Summners. One of them has been in jail, and the other had a long ago daliance with Amy. These are not nice man, but it hardly helps matters when Amy stops, topless, at a window in front of the workers. This is no justification for anything, but with these men and with 1971 standards, it is a foolish move.
Eventually, the men distract David, and Amy is raped, first by her former suiter, and then much more forceably by another in the possee. She does not tell David, but, he knows. Still, he does not confront the men.
But he does, the next day. When a disabled man accidently kills the daughter of one of the toughs, David accidently hits him in his car, and takes him home to care for him and protect him from the gang. The hoods arrive, and demand David hand him over. David refuses, and the men raid the house, setting fires, trying to get in.
He has had enough, and David fends them off with guns, knives, and homemade hot acid he prepares on his stove. He is transformed: at one point, one of the men is bound, his neck on broken glass, and the once jellyfish David says "good, I hope you slit your throat." Amy at first refuses to help David, but he, slapping her, litterally threatens to kill her if she does not. "We're dead if they get in." he says
One by one and with increasing relish, David kills all the men,
On the surface, the arguement that this is a pro-violent film is pretty strong. David seems to get vindication for himself, and Amy, by confronting and winning the battle with these sociopaths.
But at what price: David ends the film, clothes torn, blood stained,
his home in ruins. He has hit his wife and crossed lines he can never uncross. Was he right? Did he have any other real options? What has this done to him at his core--he will cetianly never be the person he was before that night. His marrage: what is going to happen to both these people?
In 1971, you could apply these questions to Vietnam, student uprisings, race riots. Now, you could ask: what do we do about an Osama Bin Ladin, a Taliban? How does a peaceful person act when confroted by an amoral bully? Eight years after 9/11, Abu Grabe, Gauntonamo Bay, are WE ever going to be the same? What has the unthinkable made US do?
This film is not going to answer any of the questions it poeses in a way that makes thinking people feel comforable. But, then and now, it does provide a context in which we can think about when violence is really needed, and how we deal with it when it is. Straw Dogs shows the COST of violence.
At the end of the film, the disabled man says "I don't know my way home."
"That's ok," replies David.
"I don't know, either."
Movie Review: A nerve-shredding, palm-sweating thriller.......and drama.
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is one of the best works of Sam Peckinpah this movie deals with the true humanitarian phenomena, human nature for sexual orientation and needs and the most human seduction and temptation. This movie thrills you from the start to the end and the most magnificent aspect of the movie is its ambiguity and confusing nature of climax. "Straw Dogs" is an intense thriller that shows what can happen when you push even the mildest mannered man too far. In here, Dustin Hoffman plays a mathematician who temporarily moves to a house in a rural village in England with his wife, a former resident of the town, played by Susan George. The two withstand incessant needling from several of the townsfolk until George is raped and assaulted and Hoffman is pushed over the edge.
Incidentally, right after watching this film I found a documentary on cable about filmmakers from the late '60s to late '70s and one of the directors profiled was Sam Peckinpah. I had always considered his films to be violent and vaguely shocking, which never surprised me, knowing that he was a hard-living maverick who did things his way - an element that is resplendent in most of his films. A brief mention of Straw Dogs was included in this documentary, where they described it as a "sexist film". There are obvious scenes in the film that could support this criticism, but I think that is overanalyzing the film with a political correctness that is out of place. While the two female characters are both victimized, Susan George also has her moments of empowerment. I may be a female, but I don't consider Peckinpah's tendency to make testosterone-driven films any more sexist than anything that Tarantino puts out, and I'm a big fan of his work as well. It's a dangerous line to draw when one labels a film due to what is *not* included in a film.
What this film does contain is much more stellar - Hoffman is beyond incredible in this film. His character development is amazing to experience. One criticism of the film that I heard from a friend who saw it before me was that it "dragged." I couldn't disagree more. The development of the story until the extremely violent climax is a perfect pace because it made me feel like I was sitting in a dentist chair, knowing that this low boil could explode at any time. After the dust settles, the viewer is left to decide whether Hoffman's character made the right decision, and left to speculate on the ramifications of the choices made. This is by far one of the best films I've seen in recent months and from this director.
Movie Review: Nary a coward in sight
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this is one of the most misunderstood movies I've ever run across. Even the DVD box description on the version I have states that it is the tale of "one man's journey from cowardice to courage". And after reading customer reviews that would go on for reams if they were written on paper, it seems that many of the people who have watched this movie understand it little better.
I never viewed Hoffman's character as a coward or a weakling. Certainly he was a bookish man of academia, unused to the coarse company of country laborers, but I never viewed him as frightened or even really intimidated by any of the gang in the film. He never had any problem talking to the work crew as subordinates and hired men, especially when finally firing them. His character was simply that of a very civilized man who did not anger easily or resort to violence for petty or trifling reasons. He was a serious academic from NYC in Britain on a fellowship grant to study mathematics. He wanted little else but to be left alone with his work. His alternately comely and shrewish wife invited most of the trouble that came their way.
I don't believe that he was AFRAID of violence, but that Hoffman's David was a man who did not believe that violence solved things. It was the flauting of the rule of law in the lynch mob outside his door and their serious lethality that spurred him into action. It was not the barrage of insults or petty tricks or harrassments. It was the fact that the simpleton he was harboring in his home would be immediately KILLED if turned over to the boys outside, and moreover the fact that he, his wife, AND the simpleton would be killed should the boys come inside. Back against the wall, David was not indecisive nor afraid of confrontation or action.
The director, Sam Peckinpah, believed strongly in the element of violence in the natural world. That it is neither necessarily good nor evil....only present and real and hanging over all of us as human beings even in "civilized" times. He made violence and the exploration of it main themes in most of his movies, though probably none more obvious and direct as in Straw Dogs.
I believe that his main theme for this movie is that the world is a violent place, and that being prepared to meet violence violently is a necessary rite of passage, for any person male or female.
Movie Review: Peckinpah's controversial Dogs.
Summary: 5 Stars
"Heaven and Earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad of creatures as straw dogs: the sage is ruthless, and treat the myriad of creatures as straw dogs...Is not the space between Heaven and Earth like a bellows?"-- Lao Tzu.
Known for its controversial rape scene and violent ending, Sam Peckinpah's dark, psychological drama, Straw Dogs (1971) was released the same year as A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry. Considered one of Peckinpah's greatest films, it tells the suspenseful story of David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), a young American mathematician, who moves to the British village Cornwall with his wife, Amy (Susan George). Feeling neglected in her marriage to an intellectual husband, Amy begins flirting with the local rough boys (Del Henney, Jim Norton, Peter Vaughan, Ken Hutchison, Donald Webster) working on the couple's rural farmhouse, one of whom, Charlie Venner, is Amy's former lover. One day David discovers the family cat strangled and hanging in their bedroom closet. Amy claims the workmen did it. The suspense gradually builds. Charlie then rapes Amy before a second local arrives and forces Charlie at gunpoint to restrain Amy while he also rapes her. Although Amy does not tell David about the double rape, the film ends in a 20-minute-long violent rampage. (Much of the controversy surrounding the film involved the the prolonged rape scene, rather than the film's violent ending. Feminists criticized Peckinpah for glamorizing rape and engaging in misogynistic sadism. Peckinpah's supporters countered such criticism by pointing out the scene in question is unambiguously repulsive.) As a film, Straw Dogs may not measure up to Peckinpah's best work (The Wild Bunch, for example), but it is better than his cult film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
G. Merritt